Buying A House: C or D?

our agent connected us to one of the in-house loan officers, my wife and i got terrible vibes from her, she was consistently awful, unclear, and confusing in all her answers both in person and in writing, i don't really want to work with her

i don't even really know what a loan officer does either

also apparently we won't be able to close on a loan until i've been working at my new job for a few weeks and can provide paystubs? i would've thought the offer letter w/ salary would've sufficed but i don't really know anything about this process and this person is super unhelpful. don't people relocate for a new job and buy a house before they officially start working?

Sellers like to be comfortable that you will be a good fit for the job and not get fired/quit in disgust in a few weeks. I wouldn't want to commit to buying a house in a new area with a new job.

If you don't have a good feeling about the loan officer, get a new one now. The mortgage paperwork and approval process was the biggest pain of both of my home purchases, and you really want someone you can trust to get things done on that end and be able to explain things to you. Even more important for you since you have the wrench of a new job thrown in the works. It's pretty typical for a history of paystubs to be required. Is the new job in the same field as your old one? If not expect even more delays. In my limited experience I found working with a local broker much easier than with a national bank.

Also, depending on how well you know and trust your agent, it's often recommended that you not use his or her referrals for loan officers, inspectors, attorneys (not sure if you use them in Ohio for real estate purchases), etc. Ideally those people will be working solely in your interest, but if they have an agent sending work their way they may feel pressure to move deals alongs even when they shouldn't so as to not jeopardize their relationship with the agent. If you have an excellent agent that you trust they can be a good source of recommendations, but you have to make that call. Don't feel pressure to use people you don't want to.

You're right, it can be overwhelming. I felt silly buying it, but I must admit that "Home Buying for Dummies" helped a lot for my first purchase.

thanks nick & er, i appreciate it. yea we are early enough in the process too (haven't even started the pre-approval process) that i think it is best to find a different loan officer

A buyers agent really helped me get through all this closing/mortgage/financing stuff. Recommended a lawyer, inspector, a mortgage company. Closing was one of the most stressful things I have ever gone through. I had an accepted offer and the money and the deal almost fell through because they required so much paperwork and certified stuff in a short time frame. Pay stubs are only the beginning.

On the other hand, one of my loan officer was not really on their game/inspire confidence/was unclear. I was lucky they were not the only person I was dealing with at the mortgage company.

I grew up in an eastside suburb of Cleveland (and spent a good portion of my formative years hanging out on Coventry) so I'm enjoying watching your home search.

Yow. I don't remember even a single thing about my loan officer. I'm sure there must have been one.

Before we started looking, we had done a prequalification with a normal bank person at our normal bank. She did some fiddling with a computer and up came a bunch of different offers from a bunch of different lenders - different term lengths, different insurance requirements, different interest rates, and differences in structure. All mostly came out the same in terms of payments, which was not surprising. It is a competitive market.

Maybe I'm wrong as regards your situation, but I sorta figured that every bank in the country is drawing from the same databases, so it scarcely matters where you go. I figured it was about the same as what happens when you finance a car - computer fiddling, multiple lenders, slightly different structures, but it more or less comes down to showing you a monthly payment that doesn't scare you.

I start from the assumption that they want you to stick around and sign something, not run screaming out the door. So they will (or should) work to make it palatable to you.

If they're acting like you should be prostrated and obsequious and beg to be permitted to give them money, then that is a problem on their end. They're paid on commission so they should be trying to make the deal work, not trying to make you feel unworthy of it.

The sinking feeling that maybe you blew it / are blowing it because you haven't bought a house, when you don't really want to own a house and you like your landlord and the place you rent, C or D?

xps very cool! my grandparents lived in mayfield heights, i spent a lot of time there

eephus that is a dud feeling, no shame in renting, in a lot of scenarios it seems way preferable to owning

I'd get that feeling a lot less if the rental legislation and market here weren't set to "boil forever and stir vigorously every month"

I really like being a tenant and don't need to provide for post retirement but I would like to have a place of my own to be able to put my mark on it. Which is just about a weak enough force to leave me happy as things stand.

if we decided to stay in boston, i think we would rent our current place forever, we love it, we pay a great rent for a large place and have an amazing landlord

Yeah we're in the same boat renting a much bigger place than we would otherwise afford from good friends. Tho we turn a blind eye to the odd maintenance issue and I get to deal with sewerage backups. It's a full life

anyway i want to see this place http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/12717-Arliss-Dr-Lakewood-OH-44107/33495422_zpid/
this place too, i would rip up that carpeting obv http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1203-Lakeland-Ave-Lakewood-OH-44107/33490466_zpid/

only bummer about a lot of these lakewood homes is that eat-in kitchens can be hard to find

so much stuff to deal with when you own a house. maintenance, catastrophes, neighbors and their weird choices, landscaping.

I finally stopped being lazy and bought a weed trimmer. If you want an excuse to buy a sweet-ass weed trimmer, owning a house is a good reason. Or being a professional lawn maintenance person.

Not wanting to deal with vegetation of any kind is enough of a reason for me to never want to own a detached home.

Our loan officer was like awful at communication but marvelous at being able to wrangle stuff around to make it work. I had a job starting in the fall with a signed contract but the bank didn't want to factor that in at all. We also had a renter for our old house lined up, with a signed lease that covered our existing mortgage payments but that didn't factor in either. But somehow he was able to get us a SECOND mortgage based on my wife's job while I was technically unemployed, in 2014 after the lending got a lot stricter. I have no idea how he was able to do this.

But man was he awful to talk to and shitty at explaining things.

The sinking feeling that maybe you blew it / are blowing it because you haven't bought a house, when you don't really want to own a house and you like your landlord and the place you rent, C or D?

I can't complain bcz I own a flat, but I bought a flat instead of a house and since then house prices here have almost doubled while flat prices went up by like 10%, and sometimes I wonder if I priced myself out of ever owning a house

I really like my flat and like living here, and the only house I saw in my price range was tiny and needed a lot of work and was far from the shops and just didn't feel like it could be home, but damn, that house is now way out of my price league. trying to remind myself that it doesn't matter if I didn't play things right from the investment point of view bcz from the "having a nice 6 years" point of view I did just fine

Really undervalued POV imo but I suppose you don't sell many supplements in the Sunday times based on the burgeoning "you're probably ok, actually" demographics

we definitely need more publications selling affirmations

This is a trophy property with unsurpassed beauty and potential

(in case you were wondering what the fuck that is)

both Jason types, family man Jason and slightly more dangerous Jason, are here to assist you

I have no idea how he was able to do this.

But man was he awful to talk to and shitty at explaining things.

― joygoat, Tuesday, May 3, 2016 6:52 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Tbh he probably just "explained" things to people until they said yes to make him go away.

which explains pretty well what a loan officer does

weirdly, the day after I posted that, our landlord told us that he's probably going to sell the place in the next year or so and he'd like to sell it to us.

Buying the house you already live in from your landlord, when it's in exactly the location you want but is sort of run-down in a way that doesn't bother you as a renter but sort of does as a prospective owner, C or D?

ask the Barnet Ape

Buying it from your landlord is almost certainly going to be cheaper and easier than any other option, and you can funnel that money into improving the rundown elements. Do all the same due diligence you'd otherwise do, but I'd say go for it.

also, get estimates for fixing the rundown stuff, and have that taken off the selling price

anyone have tips on selling your rental property to a tenant? a coworker is trying to do that and since he won't need all the realtor junk he's trying to find a lawyer-type person to just do the paperwork and due dilligence

Like if it's damp or major structural shit then I'd probably think again unless you can buy it at a considerable discount.

eephus!, there's also a type of FHA loan you can get that includes money for repairs/remodeling that you could look into instead of turning around and immediately taking out a second mortgage. I never looked too far into that option when I was shopping, but my agent said it comes with the stipulation that all the repairs/remodeling projects have to be done within 12 months of closing and they only hand the money out to at project-specific intervals (so you don't have a huge wad of cash to blow all at once).

my landlord decided to sell recently - i seriously considered trying to buy the place but in the end i decided i didn't want to just reactively do so - i've been saving a lot but i'm still not really there.

just moved into a new place in clapton. overall i kind of feel like owning a place brings a burden of stress and adulthood - i'm more inclined to just keep saving money and enjoying the security that brings, then buy when i feel the need. though more and more i think if i do buy i'd do so in ireland, if the work i do becomes a thing back there, which it probably will eventually. in london it seems like you'd be paying a huge amount of money to still be sharing a flat, and it might not even be nice. in dublin for half the price i could live on my own somewhere p nice and central.

never really considered leaving london, and i guess i amn't at this point, but when it comes to property or ever owning a place, i do consider it.

xpost

there's also a type of FHA loan you can get that includes money for repairs/remodeling that you could look into instead of turning around and immediately taking out a second mortgage.

Just so you understand my level of ignorance about this, I only vaguely know what a second mortgage is and I don't at all know why I would be thinking about taking one out.

"Run-down" doesn't mean "not up to code," by the way. Structurally the house seems fine and we've lived there five years. A couple of times in those five years some water came in the basement during a particularly bad rainstorm. Other than that, no real problems. Obviously we would have it inspected if we were considering buying it though. The work I would be talking about would be more on the level of "there's no space in the kitchen and it would be cool to reconfigure things so that there was more space and a nicer stove," stuff at that level.

Some people like to fix houses up as they want them right when they move in, rather than waiting to accumulate more money for upgrades. A second mortgage is another loan on the house, usually in the the low tens of thousands for such activities. The lender has second priority for being paid back in the case of you defaulting (first mortgage gets all the money from any sale up to the loan amount), and the holder of the 2nd gets any above that, up to that loan amount. Riskier then for the 2nd mortgage holder, so the rates are higher.

It wasn't until I got a second mortgage that I realized it was basically just a regular loan, with your home used as collateral. It isn't really like your other mortgage that has insurance and taxes added to it and can be horse-traded to other mortgage companies.

Several people I know have bought their place from their landlord (having previously rented it) and it seems to have gone ok for them. I mean, I guess you know the flaws/good points of the place well enough so you can negotiate a reasonable price?

i want this place http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1438-Lauderdale-Ave-Lakewood-OH-44107/33497500_zpid/

that is one street over from my gf.

:-0

oh rad!

guess what is down the street ;)

https://twitter.com/clevelandvape

lol #vapelife

1.0 bathrooms! What an odd coincidence, such a round number (?)

marcos getting a little too close to brownie's territory for comfort

it is weird, all those homes in that neighborhood have bathrooms in the basement, but those aren't typically counted in the number

http://www.criminaldefenselawyersma.com/images/pages/Restraining_Order.jpg

probably nonconforming basement rooms. in my area, at least, basement rooms can't be counted as bedrooms unless you have the proper egress window, which would take a bunch of money to retrofit into a home. stands to reason "official" bathrooms probably require some sort of code approval or at least permit documentation or they're off the grid as far as the building authority goes

typical to see realtors advertising "nonconforming" rooms but that gets cracked down on sometimes

it's also why a bunch of houses in areas that have basements in new homes tend to have a walk-out basement that they dress up with a patio/sliding door

Fuck a basement